The History of Literature

687 Gatsby Turns 100 (with James West)

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"I want to write something new," American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his editor, "something extraordinary and beautiful and simpl...

686 Russian Poetry After the Cold War (with Stephanie Sandler)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, the Soviet Union was unfriendly territory for poets and writers. But what happened when the wall fell? Emerging from the underground, the...

685 Charles Chesnutt (with Tess Chakkalakal) | My Last Book with John Goodby

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Complex and talented, Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was one of the first American authors to write for both Black and white readers. Born in Clevela...

684 The Minister's Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne (with Mike Palindrome)

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a respected church leader shows up one day wearing a mysterious veil that conceals his eyes, offering no explanation - and keeps wea...

683 Marianne Moore (with Cristanne Miller)

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marianne Moore (1887-1972) achieved something rare in American letters: a modernist poet who was popular with both critics and the public. Famous for ...

682 The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature (with Farah Jasmine Griffin) [Ad-Free Re-Release]

27 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As America closes out this year's Black History Month, Jacke dives into the archives for one of his favorite episodes, which featured a conversation w...

681 The Jolly Corner by Henry James - Part 3 | My Last Book by Colm Tóibín

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's the conclusion to "The Jolly Corner"! Spencer Brydon lived in Europe for 33 years (as did his creator, Henry James) before returning to his child...

680 The Jolly Corner by Henry James - Part 2

20 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

After spending decades in Europe, the American Henry James felt haunted by the idea that he'd given up something essential. Inspired by a trip home to...

679 The Jolly Corner by Henry James - Part 1

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although the writer Henry James (1843-1916) was born in New York City's Washington Square, he spent most of his adulthood in Europe, where he wrote su...

678 Fernando Pessoa (with Bartholomew Ryan) | My Last Book with Robin Waterfield

13 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jacke's been trying to come to grips with Portuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa ever since Harold Bloom named him one of the 26 most influential w...

677 Dylan Thomas (with John Goodby) | Emily Brontë and the Search for Hope

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dylan Thomas: brilliant poet or self-indulgent blowhard? In this episode, Jacke talks to John Goodby, co-author of the biography Dylan Thomas: A Criti...

676 "Mrs Spring Fragrance" by Sui Sin Far (with Mike Palindrome)

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Mike Palindrome, the President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins Jacke for a reading and discussion of "Mrs. Spring Fragrance" by Sui Sin Far. ...

675 Zora Neale Hurston (with Cheryl Hopson) | Jack Kerouac's Newly Discovered Writings

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was the most published African American woman writer of the first half of the twentieth century; her signature novel Th...

674 Nabokov vs Freud (with Joshua Ferris) [Ad-Free Re-Release]

30 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“I admire Freud greatly,” the novelist Vladimir Nabokov once said, “as a comic writer.” For Nabokov, Sigmund Freud was “the Viennese witch-...

673 Edna Ferber (with Julie Gilbert) | My Last Book with Jessica Kirzane

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Novelist and playwright Edna Ferber (1885-1968) lived a wondrous life: residing in Manhattan as a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table, writing a...

672 The Little Review (with Holly A. Baggett) | My Last Book with Phil Jones

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Founded in Chicago in 1914, the avant-garde journal the Little Review became a giant in the cause of modernism, publishing literature and art by lumin...

671 Shakespeare's Tragic Art (with Rhodri Lewis) | My Last Book with Joel Warner

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is a truth universally acknowledged that tragedy is one of the world's highest art forms, and that Shakespeare was one of the form's greatest pract...

670 The Parable

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Inspired by an email (from a listener?) with mysterious origins, Jacke takes a look at the brief narrative form the parable. How did parables get thei...

669 Obsessed with Melville (with Jennifer Habel and Chris Bachelder) | My Last Book with Alexander Poots

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a woman becomes obsessed with Herman Melville during the pandemic? What if the process of sorting fact from fiction in Melville's wo...

668 Book and Dagger - The Scholars and Librarians Who Became Spies and Fought the Nazis (with Elyse Graham) | Jane Austen Turns 250

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When the U.S. joined the war in the 1940s, it had a problem: its military had virtually no intelligence service. Enter the librarians! In this episode...

667 Sui Sin Far (with Victoria Namkung) | My Last Book with Samantha Rose Hill

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Edith Maude Eaton (1865-1914) grew up in unusual circumstances: her father was an English merchant who traveled to China on business, and her mother w...

666 "Winter Dreams" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Lev Grossman

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

First published in December of 1922, "Winter Dreams" was one of the short stories known as the "Gatsby cluster," as F. Scott Fitzgerald worked out the...

665 Keats's Great Odes (with Anahid Nersessian) [Ad-Free Encore Edition]

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1819, John Keats quit his job as an assistant surgeon, abandoned an epic poem he was writing, and focused his poetic energies on shorter works. Wha...

664 James Joyce's "The Dead" Part 2 [Ad-Free Encore Version]

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Happy holidays! In this episode, presented without commercial interruption, Jacke revisits the second half of the classic James Joyce short story "The...

663 James Joyce's "The Dead" Part 1 [Ad-Free Encore Edition]

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Happy holidays! In this episode, presented without commercial interruption, Jacke revisits the first part of the the classic James Joyce holiday story...

662 Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction - Black Women Writing Under Segregation (with Eve Dunbar) | My Last Book with Deni Kasa

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Generally speaking, a common conception of U.S. race relations in the mid-twentieth century runs like this: segregation was racist and bad, the doctri...

661 James Baldwin (with Colm Tóibín)

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Tóibín first read James Baldwin just after turning eighteen. Inspired by the illumination and insight in Baldwin's Go ...

660 "Wakefield" by Nathaniel Hawthorne | My Last Book with Amelia Possanza

12 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Before his marriage, before meeting Herman Melville, and before the publication of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne was living in near seclusio...

659 The Legend of King Arthur (with Lev Grossman)

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A legendary king, knights of the round table, magic and myths and valiant quests - the stories of King Arthur (also known as the "Matter of Britain") ...

658 "The Snow Fairy" by Claude McKay | Literary Journeys (with John McMurtrie)

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After taking a look at a wintry poem by Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay, Jacke talks to editor John McMurtrie about his new book Literary Journey...

657 Auden's England (with Nicholas Jenkins) | My Last Book with Gabriele Pedulla

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the beginning of his career as a poet, W.H. Auden wrestled with the meaning of Englishness. He came out with a collection of poems entitled On Th...

656 Novelist Chigozie Obioma on Literature, Life, and His Love for Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day [HOL Encore]

29 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By listener request, Jacke presents a conversation with Nigerian-born novelist Chigozie Obioma (The Road to the Country, The Fishermen, An Orchestra o...

655 Guilty Pleasures (with Mike Palindrome and Laurie Frankel) | My Last Book with Mary Flannery

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Guilty pleasures! We use the phrase all the time, but what does it really mean? Can reading a book ever be a guilty pleasure? A listener suggests that...

654 Loving (and Reclaiming) Sylvia Plath (with Emily Van Duyne)

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Troubled patron saint of confessional poetry? Quintessential literary sad girl? Genius poet rightfully viewed as the heir to Emily Dickinson? In her t...

653 J.D. Salinger

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

He's best known as the author of The Catcher in the Rye, one of the great publishing and cultural successes of the twentieth century. But there was mo...

652 Writing a Comic Novel (with Charles Baxter) | My Last Book with Bill Eville

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jacke talks to award-winning novelist and short story writer Charles Baxter about his new book, Blood Test: A Comedy, which the New York Times says "p...

651 Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey | The Heroine's Labyrinth (with Douglas Burton) | My Last Book with Douglas Burton

14 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1949, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces posited the existence of a "monomyth," a universal pattern that formed the basis of heroic tales...

650 Dante's Divine Comedy (with Joseph Luzzi)

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Written in the early 1300s, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy has been an essential component of Western literature for more than 700 years. In this epi...

649 Mind and Media in the Enlightenment (with Collin Jennings) | Mike Recommends A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway | My Last Book with David L. Cooper

07 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's a Literary Feast Day at the History of Literature Podcast! First, Jacke talks to old friend Mike Palindrome about his love for A Moveable Feast, ...

648 Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (with Alex Vernon) | My Last Book with Sandra Spanier

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout the 1930s, Ernest Hemingway was in the public eye as a journalist, short story writer, activist, and one of the most famous writers on the ...

647 The Brontes [HOL Encore]

31 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Although their lives were filled with darkness and death, their love for stories and ideas led them into the bright realms of creative genius. They we...

646 Discovering a Long Lost Slave Narrative (with Jonathan D.S. Schroeder)

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When he undertook his research on Harriet Jacobs and her brother John Swanson Jacobs, scholar Jonathan D.S. Schroeder wasn't expecting to find John's ...

645 Richard Wright

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Wright was one of those people," said poet Amiri Baraka, "who made me conscious of the need to struggle." In this episode, Jacke takes a look at th...

644 Jack Kerouac (with Steven Belletto)

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Critics didn't know quite what to make of twentieth-century American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), but readers had less difficulty. In s...

643 Aesop and His Fables (with Robin Waterfield) | My Last Book with Boel Westin

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Aesop's fables - including such classics as "The Tortoise and the Hare," "The Fox and the Grapes," and "The Ant and the Grasshopper" - are among the m...

642 Theater and Democracy (with James Shapiro)

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's hard to imagine now, but the United States government wasn't always hostile or indifferent to the arts. In fact, from 1935 to 1939, President Fra...

641 Blood, Guts, and Books - Inside the Medieval Scriptorium (with Sara Charles) | My Last Book with Elizabeth Coggeshall

10 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Medieval manuscripts are so wondrously beautiful they deserve comparison with the world's finest works of art. But what was behind the production of t...

640 Chaucer the Merry Bard (with Mary Flannery)

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Yes, he's the father of English poetry, and yes, he's perhaps best known today for bawdy tales like the Wife of Bath. But who was Geoffrey Chaucer? Ho...

639 Immersed in Print (with Geoffrey Turnovsky) | My Last Book with Liz Rosenberg

03 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Bibliophiles everywhere know the sweet feeling of getting lost in a book. And like all good literary snobs, we tend to think that full immersion requi...

638 Thomas Mann

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For fifty years, Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) lived his life as Germany's preeminent novelist and one of Europe's most respected intelle...

637 From the Archives - Heart of Darkness (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Fred Waitzkin

26 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We asked, you answered! In response to a listener recommendation, we revisit a conversation from 2017 in which Mike and Jacke discuss Joseph Conrad's ...

636 Emily Dickinson's Letters (with Cristanne Miller)

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who was Emily Dickinson? We think we know her, or at least one side of her, from her poems. But what was she like when she wasn't writing poetry? What...

635 Darwin and Cataclysmic Change (with Allen MacDuffie) | My Last Book with Adelle Waldman

19 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dealing with reality can be difficult enough, but when the nature of that reality is completely overturned - as it is in a case like the climate crisi...

634 The Bible: A Global History (with Bruce Gordon) | My Last Book with Michelle P Brown

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For more than two thousand years, the Bible has been an essential part of the world's conception of humanity and its relationship to God. But although...

633 Hemingway's Letters (with Sandra Spanier) | My Last Book with Andrew Stauffer

12 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Discussions of Ernest Hemingway tend to focus on the peaks of his career, which are typically centered around his most famous novels. But Hemingway wa...

632 Norman Mailer (with J. Michael Lennon)

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For almost sixty years, Norman Mailer was a fixture on the American literary scene, seemingly as well known for his feuds and personal exploits as he ...

631 Shakespeare's Sisters (with Ramie Targoff) | My Last Book with Sarah Gristwood

05 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Recently, we talked to novelist Jodi Picoult about her contention that many of the works commonly attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by a...

630 Queer Shakespeare (with Will Tosh) | Ray Bradbury and the Search for the Mysterious Mr Electrico

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Was Shakespeare gay? Will Tosh, head of research at Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, says that question has an easy answer - but more importantl...

629 Unlocking the Creative Unconscious (with Kate Feiffer)

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For thousands of years, desperate writers have struggled with the condition known as writer's block. In this episode, Jacke talks to novelist Kate Fei...

628 Meet the Woman Who REALLY Wrote Shakespeare's Plays (with Jodi Picoult) | My Last Book with Allison Pataki

20 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is it really true? Did the Elizabethan poet Emilia Bassano (sometimes known as Aemelia Lanyer) actually write Shakespeare's works? A bestselling novel...

627 Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" (with Mark Cirino)

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's one of the most famous and admired short stories that Ernest Hemingway ever wrote - and also one of the most controversial. In this episode, Hemi...

626 Mike Recommends... Roland Barthes! | Storytelling for Fun and Profit with Matt Abrahams

08 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As fans of literature, we all know how powerful and effective storytelling can be. But can we harness that power to help us communicate in our daily l...

625 Louisa May Alcott - The Essays (with Liz Rosenberg)

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since the publication of Little Women in 1868, millions of readers have gotten to know (and love) Louisa May Alcott through her fiction. But in her ow...

624 Top 10 Great Performances (with Laurie Frankel) | My Last Book with James Shapiro

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Theater is by nature ephemeral: even the greatest of performances are fleeting, thrilling a single audience before disappearing into history. But what...

623 Unpacking a Japanese Masterpiece - The Hakkenden, or Eight Dogs (with Glynne Walley) | Literature and the Olympics

25 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Hakkenden, or Eight Dogs is one of the classics of Japanese literature. In this episode, Jacke talks to translator Glynne Walley about this massiv...

622 Lesbians in the Archives (with Amelia Possanza)

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lesbians have been around for thousands of years (at least!), but their voices have often fallen victim to censorship, oppression, and ostracization. ...

621 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy was "the greatest of all novelists," and her argument was simple: "[W]hat else can we call the author of War and Peace...

620 Necromantics (with Renee Fox) | Herman Hesse on What We Learn from Trees

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What was the deal with the Victorians and their obsession with reanimating corpses? How did writers like Mary Shelley, Robert Browning, Charles Dicken...

619 Fred Waitzkin on Kerouac, Hemingway, and His New Novel | My Last Book with Michael Blanding

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Novelist Fred Waitzkin (Searching for Bobby Fischer) stops by to discuss Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, and his new novel Anything Is Good, which tel...

618 A Year of Women's Diaries (with Sarah Gristwood) | Sharon Olds | My Last Book with Suzanne Scanlon

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Women haven't always been given an equal chance to contribute to literature - but they were writing nevertheless, sometimes just for themselves. In th...

617 Politics and Grace in Early Modern Literature (with Deni Kasa) | Mike Recommends... James Baldwin! | My Last Book with Carlos Allende

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Early modern poets - John Milton, Edmund Spenser, Aemilia Lanyer, Abraham Cowley - lived in a world where theological questions were as hotly conteste...

616 Madwomen and Literature (with Suzanne Scanlon) | Sylvia Plath | My Last Book with Adhar Noor Desai

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The relationship between literature and "madwomen" has deep roots. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Suzanne Scanlon (Committed: On Meaning and M...

615 A Conversation with Nicholson Baker | My Last Book with Vera Kutizinski and Anthony Reed

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What a treat! First, Jacke talks to Nicholson Baker, an author he's been reading for the past three decades, about Finding a Likeness: How I Got Somew...

614 Family Matters (with Bill Eville) | Fatherhood in Three Poems | Storytime with Jacke

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Families can provide wonderful material for a writer, but they can also be tricky to navigate. How do you make your stories of home interesting to oth...

613 Celebrating the Book-Makers (with Adam Smyth) | My Last Book with Christopher de Hamel

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Books are beloved objects, earning lots of praise as amazing pieces of technology and essential contributors to a civilized society. And yet, we often...

612 Finding Margaret Fuller (with Allison Pataki) | My Last Book with James Marcus

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fearless and fiercely intelligent, the nineteenth-century American feminist Margaret Fuller was "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcende...

611 John Buchan (with Ursula Buchan) | My Last Book with Marsha Gordon | A Hemingway Letter

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Scottish writer John Buchan is perhaps best known for his pioneering thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, the source material for one of Alfred Hitchcock's...

610 How to Become Famous (with Cass Sunstein) | My Last Book with James MacManus

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we read John Keats and not one of his well-regarded peers? Why do some authors disappear into the sands of time - while others, virtually unkno...

609 Swimming in Paris (with Colombe Schneck) | My Last Book with Pardis Dabashi

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Dear listeners: What kind of life are you living? What's your relationship between your body, mind, and soul? And what can you learn about your deepes...

608 The Encyclopedia of the Dog (with Jose Vergara) | My Last Book with Gareth Russell

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

First published in 1980, Between Dog and Wolf by Sasha Sokolov is one of the most acclaimed Russian novels of the twentieth century. But the book, wit...

607 Upton Sinclair and the Muckraking Novelist (with Adelle Waldman) | My Last Book with Edward Chamberlin

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Can novelists make a difference in the world? Of course we know they can - we've seen plenty of examples. But how does it happen? And what are the cha...

606 Love, Loss, and Literature (with Sophie Ratcliffe)

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Why do we fall in love? Why do we fall out of love? And how can literature shape the way we travel these emotional and romantic landscapes? In this ep...

605 Tove Jansson, Creator of the Moomins (with Boel Westin)

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

She's been called Scandinavia's best loved author - but "author" only begins to describe Tove Jansson's genius. Famous worldwide as the creator of the...

604 How Russian Literature Became Great (with Rolf Hellebust) | My Last Book with Valeria Sobol

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov... the familiar Russian names are at the pinnacle of world literature. How did this happen? Was it merely a happy acciden...

603 Rethinking Ralph Waldo Emerson (with James Marcus)

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Born more than two centuries ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson has long been recognized as a giant of nineteenth-century American letters. But what can he offe...

602 Thomas Hardy's "Spellbound Palace," The Birthplace of the King James Bible, and a Royal Setting for Shakespeare and His Plays (with Gareth Russell) | My Last Book with Jess Cotton

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We humans imprint ourselves on our surroundings - and they, in turn, have the power to affect us. In this episode, Jacke talks to Gareth Russell (The ...

601 Thomas Hardy (with Margot Livesey)

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's the start of a new hundred episodes! Fresh off her tour for her new novel The Road from Belhaven, superguest Margot Livesey joins Jacke for a dis...

600 Doctor Johnson! (with Phil Jones) | A Very Special My Last Book (with Rupert Holmes)

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's another milestone for the History of Literature Podcast! Jacke celebrates the six hundredth episode of the podcast with a return to one of his ol...

599 Alejandro Jodorowsky, Filmmaker and Philosopher (with William Egginton) | My Last Book with David Sterling Brown

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

While avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky might be most famous for the wildly ambitious version of Dune that never got made - in spite of havin...

598 Forgotten Women of Literature 8 - Charmian Kittredge London (with Iris Jamahl Dunkle) | What's Great About Christopher Isherwood (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Duncan Yoon

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Charmian Kittredge London (1871-1955) may be best known as the wife of the famous American writer Jack London, but she was herself a literary trailbl...

597 Karl Ove Knausgaard (with Bob Blaisdell) | My Last Book with Nicholas Dames

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard (b. 1968) became known in his home country - or at least its literary circles - when he put out two well-received...

596 The Power of Stories (with J Edward Chamberlin) | Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson | Flannery O'Connor (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Shin Yu Pai

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's a literary smorgasbord! First, Jacke dives into the recent news of the surprising connection between Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson. Next, he w...

595 Machiavelli (with Gabriele Pedulla) | My Last Book with Sarah Ruden

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, Machiavelli has been viewed as everything from an insightful pragmatist to the mouthpiece of Satan. In this episode, Jacke talks to Ita...

594 Samuel Taylor Coleridge

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) has been called the last person to have read everything. He is also one of the greatest poet-cri...

593 Vladimir Propp (with Mike Palindrome) | The Russian Gothic (with Valeria Sobol) | My Last Book with Vanessa Riley

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's a multi-course literary feast at the History of Literature Podcast! Today we serve up some thoughts on books and the arts from Galileo Galilei; M...

592 Virgil (with Sarah Ruden) | Darwin and Gaskell | My Last Book with Tom Holland

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Virgil (or Vergil) was the most celebrated poet of Ancient Rome - and also one of the most enigmatic. In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer and t...

591 William Wordsworth

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or histo...

590 Blotted Lines (with Adhaar Noor Desai) | My Last Book with Lara Vetter

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do geniuses compose their poetry and prose? Do they carefully and laboriously revise until they achieve perfection? Or does perfection just flow o...

589 Dante and Friendship (with Elizabeth Coggeshall) | My Last Book with Dr Tara Bynum

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We know - or we think we know - what friendship is today, but what did it mean to Dante? In this episode, Jacke travels back to the Middle Ages with P...

588 China in African Literature (with Duncan Yoon) | My Last Book with Katherine Howe

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Many readers today are familiar with the impact that Western countries have had on Africa, as told through the eyes of writers in both Africa and the ...